Another thing to beware of is overclocking. I played with it just for fun the other day and my CPU started running steady state at double its normal temp. Even though is was running faster, the faults it was throwing made it actually preform worse. Thermal degradation is a side effect of overclocking, and should be used with care.
 
My CPU is pretty generic nowadays, and running the X3 demo project (muting the mix down and processing the rest of that project) runs my CPU at 14% in "power saving" mode... CPU at only ~22C.

CakeAlexS
> Turned off the page file.
I wouldn't recommend this even with a ton of memory, I would leave it to be managed by the operating system. There is however some benefit to move it on the fastest drive/partition. (it used to be one of those things that used to be really important to do but with all this memory floating around it's becoming less and less so).
 

I agree that this is not a solution for everyone. It works for me because this is a tweaked dedicated box, everything is turned off and memory usage is < 4GB even with very large projects loaded. The worst that can happen is something runs out of memory and possibly crashes, not a big deal, things have crashed before. It's perfectly safe if you keep an eye on things. If the machine ever gets close to using 1/2 its memory, I might consider turning it back on. The page file is just swap, if you have enough memory, it's not needed. It just depends on the load.
 
For example:
Normally you want around 1.5 x RAM for swap. On an 8GB box that's 12GB which puts your virtual memory total at around 20GB. By the time you actually fill 8GB, the box will be swapping pretty badly and dog*ss slow. I've never had a project loaded in Cakewalk that comes even close to using 8GB even with insanely high plugin counts. Normally Windows allocates 1 x RAM for swap and only increases it when it's needed.
 
The main reason you want to max out the RAM on your DAW is to eliminate swapping. The problem on Windows is the swap algorithm is kind of stupid, it still swaps even if there is enough RAM to handle the load "just in case".
If you put 32GB in your box and treat it like a 16GB box with a 16GB swap (in memory), you'll never have a problem. The only caveat is that you have to keep an eye on your memory load, fortunately Cakewalk put a nifty performance meter in the UI to let you keep track of those things.
Best

wrt swap file, it's worth setting the min & max values the same, so windows doesn't decide to resize it at an inopportune moment

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2160852
 
 

Oh and:
http://lifehacker.com/5426041/understanding-the-windows-pagefile-and-why-you-shouldnt-disable-it
 

Hay there People...and Bunnies...and other wild critters of the forest...ect.
 
I have same issues with spikes in sonar x2a x3b x3c... after months of tweaking the os win 7 64bit..and fiddling with in the BIOS over long periods of time...I went into my BIOS Today and found that CPU speed step was enabled,  I thought I disabled it long ago...but not So....So I disabled it...And I think this solved my problem with spiking in Sonar X3c.
 
I have to go back into the Bios and write down my selections now...I feel blessed to have found a possible cure for my spikes...and others who may have them....perhaps?
 
If this proves to be the cause, and we find more tweaks in bios to help setup Sonar so it is rock solid...maybe a listing of these tweaks could be posted up on top of the forums...And people who visit with issues can address them, do the check list first before installing Sonar....perhaps?
 
Not sure yet if it solve all my problems..or if it solves other peoples problems...But it is a start to something.
 
Meade and shrubberries are necessary for re-hair growth, and "sound" Spirit & mind.
 
Sir Les